The CTO's Calculated Absence

How strategic distance from your team creates exponential executive influence

I'm standing in my kitchen, mechanically stirring a pot of pasta while my mind is miles away. My VP of Engineering, Sarah, just left after our casual Friday evening catch-up. I invited her over to discuss some upcoming projects, but what I didn't expect was her enthusiastic rundown of three critical architecture decisions the team made this week. They were good decisions—great ones, actually—the exact same calls I would have made.

But instead of feeling proud, there's this nagging voice in my head: "They didn't even need to consult you."

The wooden spoon circles the pot. Around and around.

Another thought crashes in, even more unsettling: "What would Melissa think if she knew?" Melissa, my CEO, who handpicked me three years ago to build and lead this engineering organization. Would she see a technology team that runs so smoothly it barely needs its chief technologist as a triumph or as a sign that I've become redundant?

The pasta water boils over, snapping me back to the present. I quickly turn down the heat, but the simmering anxiety remains.

The Ghost in the Machine

When I joined the company, the engineering team consisted of eight talented but disorganized developers. No clear processes, architecture discussions that went in circles, and a product roadmap that was more like a wish list than an executable plan. The CEO needed someone to bring order to chaos and build the machine that would drive the company's technical future.

And I did exactly that.

Three years later, we have frameworks for decision-making, architecture reviews that happen without my constant supervision, and a team of thirty engineers who understand our technology principles so deeply they can apply them intuitively.

I built the perfect machine. And now it's working so well that I've started feeling like a ghost haunting my own creation — present but increasingly unnecessary.

This isn't what I expected success to feel like.

The Paradox of Leadership Excellence

A week after my kitchen epiphany, I meet with David, my long-time mentor who's been a CTO at companies five times our size. I walk him through my dilemma over coffee, trying to sound logical rather than insecure.

"I've reached this weird point where I've trained my team so well that they're making all the right decisions without me. I should be celebrating, but instead, I'm wondering if I've engineered myself out of relevance."

David smiles, reaches into his bag, and pulls out a dog-eared copy of Andy Grove's "High Output Management." He flips to a page marked with a yellow sticky note.

"The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence," he reads. Then he closes the book and leans forward.

"Etienne, you're experiencing the ultimate success as a leader — you've created an organization that embodies your values and judgment. They don't need you for every decision because you've built yourself into the DNA of the team. That's not redundancy. That's replication."

The concept immediately resonates. Replication, not redundancy.

"Your job now," David continues, "isn't to be needed by your team for day-to-day decisions. It's to be invaluable to the C-Suite for strategic direction. The best CTOs create teams that don't need them while simultaneously becoming indispensable to their executive peers."

The Leadership Tightrope

This conversation sparked a complete reframing of how I view my role. I realized I've been walking a leadership tightrope that many CTOs struggle with:

On one side, there's the trap of being the technical bottleneck — the person who must approve every decision, review every architecture diagram, and sign off on every tool selection. This creates a dependent team and a CTO who's constantly in the weeds rather than looking ahead.

On the other side is the trap I was falling into — building such a self-sufficient team that you start questioning your own value, especially at the executive level.

The sweet spot lies in balancing between these extremes: creating a team that makes excellent decisions independently while simultaneously elevating your strategic contribution to the C-Suite.

The Signs of Imbalance

Reflecting on my situation, I started recognizing the warning signs that CTOs are struggling with this balance. They fall broadly into two categories:

The Indispensable-to-Team, Invisible-to-C-Suite CTO:

• You're constantly pulled into technical discussions and problem-solving

• Your calendar is filled with internal meetings rather than executive strategy sessions

• You're the bottleneck for technical decisions

• Your team panics when you take vacation

• Executive peers rarely seek your input on business strategy

• You're seen as the "technical implementer" rather than a strategic voice

The Invisible-to-Team, Uncertain-to-C-Suite CTO:

• You've built a team that functions well without you

• You feel increasingly disconnected from day-to-day technology decisions

• You struggle to articulate your unique value to the organization

• You worry about being perceived as redundant

• You haven't clearly transitioned from tactical to strategic leadership

• Your executive influence isn't proportional to your team's excellence

I was firmly in the second category — I had built a high-functioning organization but hadn't fully stepped into my strategic role at the executive level.

The Transformation Mindset

The shift in mindset required was profound. I had to recognize that my value wasn't diminishing — it was evolving. Just as a startup transforms from its initial scrappy phase to a more structured organization, the role of the CTO must transform too.

In the early days, your value lies in hands-on technical leadership and building the foundation. As the organization matures, your value shifts to strategic vision, cross-functional leadership, and ensuring technology enables the business in ways others haven't even considered yet.

This isn't an easy transition. It requires intentionally letting go of the comfortable parts of the job where you feel most competent and embracing new areas where you're still developing expertise.

Building Your Successor While Becoming Irreplaceable

I read a fascinating interview with Reed Hastings, Netflix's co-founder, where he described how he intentionally hired people who could eventually replace him. He said, "The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context rather than by trying to control their people."

This is the essence of what high-performing CTOs must do: build our successors while simultaneously making ourselves irreplaceable in new ways.

Here's how I've approached this transformation:

1. Measure your success differently

I stopped measuring my success by how many technical decisions required my input and started measuring it by how many business decisions were influenced by technology considerations that I introduced.

2. Create visibility into team excellence without controlling it

Rather than being in every decision, I created visibility mechanisms that kept me informed without becoming a bottleneck. Weekly architecture review summaries, decision logs with clear reasoning, and regular skip-level meetings all help me stay connected without controlling.

3. Translate technical excellence into business impact

I began spending more time translating what my team was doing into business terms that resonated with my executive peers. Instead of detailed technical updates, I focused on how our technology decisions supported business agility, reduced operational risks, or enabled new revenue opportunities.

4. Cultivate strategic technology thinking in your C-Suite

I started introducing relevant technology trends and competitive insights into executive discussions — not technology for its own sake, but specifically how emerging tech could create strategic advantages or disrupt our industry.

5. Create thinking space

I intentionally blocked time for strategic thinking rather than filling my calendar with tactical meetings. As David told me, "If you're always reacting to what your team needs today, you'll never see what your company needs tomorrow."

Two Steps Ahead

Over several months, I gradually shifted my focus. I still maintained a pulse on our technology organization, but I wasn't in the critical path of decision-making. Instead, I was looking two steps ahead.

I started taking more meetings with customers alongside our product team, gaining firsthand insights into their challenges. I built relationships with CTOs in adjacent industries, looking for cross-pollination opportunities. I initiated quarterly technology trend sessions with my executive team, translating complex tech developments into business implications.

Interestingly, this shift did more than just change how I spent my time — it changed how I was perceived. The CEO began calling me proactively for input on potential acquisitions. The sales team started bringing me into strategic customer discussions earlier. And when the board wanted to understand our technology moat against a new competitor, guess who got the call?

The Balancing Act

The pinnacle of CTO effectiveness is creating a team that doesn't need you for day-to-day excellence while becoming someone the C-Suite can't make critical decisions without. It's a paradox that many technical leaders struggle with, but embracing this tension is key to evolving your impact.

A recent Harvard Business Review study on executive leadership found that the most effective functional leaders spend only about 20% of their time on functional expertise and 80% on cross-functional, strategic initiatives. Yet many CTOs still spend the majority of their time on technical details rather than business strategy.

This balancing act doesn't mean abandoning your technical roots. In fact, your credibility as a strategic leader stems from your technical expertise. The difference is in how you apply that expertise — focusing less on making technical decisions and more on connecting technology to business outcomes in ways nobody else can.

The New Metric of Success

Six months after my kitchen revelation, I'm sitting in our executive offsite. The leadership team is debating our expansion strategy into a new market segment. The discussion has been going on for nearly an hour when the CEO turns to me.

"Etienne, we haven't heard from you. What technology considerations should we be factoring into this decision?"

I outline three critical aspects of our technology architecture that would influence our ability to move quickly in this new market, highlight two potential competitive advantages our unique technical approach would give us, and raise one significant risk we'd need to mitigate.

The room falls quiet for a moment. Then our Chief Revenue Officer says, "That completely changes my thinking on our approach to this. We need to lead with the second advantage you mentioned."

Later, the CEO pulls me aside. "That perspective was invaluable. It's exactly why we need you in these discussions."

Walking back to my office, I realize I haven't spoken to my VP of Engineering in three days, and yet I know without checking that the team is executing flawlessly. They don't need me — and that's exactly as it should be.

I've found my new metric of success: I've built a team that operates excellently without me, while becoming a leader the executive team couldn't imagine making strategic decisions without.

The pasta water no longer boils over when I think about my role. Instead, I'm learning to embrace the CTO's invisible strength — the power of building yourself into the foundation of your organization while simultaneously elevating your impact to new heights.

This isn't redundancy. It's multiplying your influence far beyond what any single person could achieve alone.

I'm no longer just the chief technologist. I've become the chief technology strategist — invisible in the day-to-day machinery but indispensable in shaping where that machinery takes us next.